Seguin, Texas on a Saturday Night

[Aucoq]

A few weeks back, I went out to San Antonio on business.  I had a bag of free time and an expense account, so I did some wandering around.  The Alamo was a bit of a let down, aside from the crazy preachers in the plaza out front.  Mike (not Engineer Mike), Jeff, and I stopped to listen to one, and he became flustered.  It was kind of neat, actually, and we pulled for him, like we'd pull for a first time stand up comic with a bad case of stage fright.

Then I made the mistake of visiting Stella, out in Seguin.  Stella wasn't the problem...On the contrary, she and her daughter made me feel very welcome.  The problem was the town itself.

On Saturday, Stella and I went to get some coffee at about 2PM.  As we pulled up to the coffee shop, we saw a small group of teabagger-esque protestors holding up signs.  We couldn't read the signs, because they were either really tiny, or - in one case - done with all the letters colored differently, on the back of real estate signs they had stolen.

I am annoyed by bad propaganda, so I pulled forward 3 spaces along the curb, both to read the sign, and to annoy the fat lady with the sour face that was holding the offending sign.  The sign read "WIGGENS MUST GO"...Apparently, Wiggins is a judge there, and he got caught dealing pot.  Being a typical small town, the police refused to do anything about it.  I found out later that they were playing jurisdiction games to try to make the problem go away.

The lady, upon being blocked, shot Stella a nasty look, and then moved to the next block.  We had a good time making fun of them while we drank our coffee...The coffee shop owner was giggling while we did so, but the other patrons kept giving us sour looks.

There was NOTHING ELSE TO DO in that town...So we wound up going to the bar a little early for Saint Patrick's Day.  Outside the bar were a bunch of rusty cars and pickups, each with a confederate flag.  One nice, new Avalanche was also out front, with the infamous "re-nig" bumpersticker on it.  I was clearly in the Yahoo Nation, and I could tell that things were going to go downhill fast.

Inside, there were a half-dozen rednecks at the bar, and an older guy wearing expensive - by Seguin's standards - clothes.  He was apparently the owner of the Avalanche.  He was about 60...But if the girl sitting on his lap swapping spit with him was 18, I will kiss my own ass.

The bartender was a young Hispanic lady with a ridiculous leprechaun hat and a smile stapled to her face.  She was clearly not enjoying the holiday.  I ordered a Sprite for myself and a Shiner Boch for Stella, and then spoke to the bartender.

"You don't LOOK Irish."

"Heh.  My boss made me wear this damn thing."

"Is HE Irish?"

"No.  He's as German as everyone else in this fucked up town."

She was giving me the stink eye.  I think she smelled cop, and apparently the town was waiting for out of town cops to come investigate Judge Wiggins (Judging from the news online, they're still waiting).

"Well, tell your boss that St Patrick's Day is no excuse for wandering around being Irish all day."

She laughed, and went to serve one of the rednecks down the bar.

Stella and I sat there for a while, making fun of Texas, the Alamo, and Seguin.  I named all the rednecks, as each one exemplified a different type of redneck.  The fat one was Bubba, the guy trying to hide his lack of chin with a scraggly beard was Cletus, etc.  The locals that heard us didn't look happy about our behavior, but I think the cop thing kept them from giving us a proper Texas "welcome".

After a time, I went to take a piss.  The men's room was a stall, a trough, and also the back door to the bar.  While I was pissing, two ladies of Japanese descent walked through the backdoor, right past me, and into the bar.  I'm telling you, this place OOZED class.  Above the trough, some confused yahoo had written "Liberal faggots shood (sic) suck my cock."

When I came back out, the mood had turned even uglier.  The Japanese ladies had decided, it seemed, to sit at Someone's Chosen Table.  The man was telling them that this was his traditional table, and the Japanese ladies were explaining that they couldn't give two fucks about his traditions.  Strangely enough, the man backed down and sat at the next table, sulking at them, much to their amusement.

Stella and I continued talking shit until we got bored, and then decided to whip around to the park, where there was supposedly some kind of party going on.  There was, but everyone there was in their 20s, so we sat in a pavilion a few hundred feet away and smoked & joked for a while.

The park, incidentally, contains the town's sewer treatment plant.  Right next to the fence surrounding the plant was the bathroom...One of those hideous cinderblock blockhouse-type bathrooms.  We both had to piss like racehorses, but I dreaded the bathroom.  You could smell it from a hundred feet away.

But what choice did we have?  She went around to the women's side, and I went in the men's entrance.  I looked down in the urinal as I began to piss, and saw a pair of leopard-print women's panties wadded up in the bottom.  This added the perfect amount of sleaze; it sort of told all of Seguin's pathetic story to me...Failure and low-rent romance, in a town that empties itself of Black people a half hour before dusk.

When I came out, Stella was still in the bathroom, so I waited on the lawn beside the service road.  A few seconds later, a pickup truck with a lift kit and two chinless wonders roared up.  The yahoo in the passenger seat eyeballed me, sizing me up for a stomping.  A strange face in a small town is fodder for that sort of thing, especially in a drunken Texas backwater. 

He belched, and then said "Who the hell'r YEW?"

I glared at him and said, "FBI.  Is something wrong?"

The yahoos eyes got big, and they roared off.  Thanks again, Judge Wiggins.

Stella came out a moment later, and I drove her home.  I dropped her off near her house, and then went up to the Texas Cooler on the corner to get a pack of smokes.  There was nobody at the counter, but I heard what was apparently a little on-the-job loving coming from behind a cubicle-style partition at the back.  I loudly cleared my throat, and I heard some frantic whispering behind the partition.

A moment or so later, a woman weighing at least 300 pounds waddled out and sold me two packs of smokes.  As I was leaving, I saw a guy weighing maybe 95 pounds standing next to the screen in his underwear, looking at me.  The woman was probably in her 50s, the guy was maybe 25, and apparently had no teeth.  I was overcome with loathing, for reasons that I can't really explain to anyone who has never been to small town Texas.

I calmly got into my rental car, and then screeched out of the parking lot.  Although I hate machines that talk to people, I engaged the GPS...I was NOT getting lost in this creepy fucking town.  I hit the city limits doing 70MPH, and jammed onto the highway, accelerating up to 90 or so, dodging drunks, heading back to the relatively civilized San Antonio, where people at least have the decency to keep all their chromosomes in the right order.

None of this really does justice to the hopeless squalor that is Seguin.  It's everything that's wrong with rural America.  It's the reality behind the myth of "small town living".  Small towns aren't "wholesome", they are horrible pits full of crime, alcoholism, and drug abuse.  You can't leave anything around, or it's gone.  The people are bored, mean drunks who will stomp you for any reason or no reason at all, if they think they can get away with it.

They are the people of the flattened DNA helix.  We must leave them behind, if there is to be any hope at all for our species.

Okay for now,
Dok

What a great post, Dok!  And it's so true of small town Texas.  I thought crap like that only happened in a stretch of land I hate here (that starts just south of Dallas and doesn't end until you pass Waco).  I once had a cop give me the ol' "never come back here" threat and the "we don't like outsiders here" line near Waxahachie.  But it sounds like that's common place everywhere in rural Texas.

A long time ago, I gave myself a little rule to live by.  One of the very few I have.  It's "never stop in a small town here (Texas) for anything other than gas."  I refuse to spend a significant amount of time anywhere in Texas unless it's Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, or Houston.  Looking back, that might be the best rule I've ever come up with.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Update: another Saturday night in Seguin ~ http://seguingazette.com/news/article_f7809790-b4b3-11e1-904d-001a4bcf887a.html?mode=story

We know that guy, he's my daughter's best friend's mom's ex-boyfriend. Of course the rumor going around town is that he was "cut in half".

Oh, Seguin! 

I need to look at a map, in order to determine whether I have or have not been through Seguin. It sounds familiar, but that could just be from hearing about it from you.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

What a great post, Dok!  And it's so true of small town Texas.  I thought crap like that only happened in a stretch of land I hate here (that starts just south of Dallas and doesn't end until you pass Waco).  I once had a cop give me the ol' "never come back here" threat and the "we don't like outsiders here" line near Waxahachie.  But it sounds like that's common place everywhere in rural Texas.

I got pulled over with some friends once in my hometown (Columbus, TX) and got the "never come back" threat.
It was a new cop (Columbus was always getting new cops, usually the ones other towns decided they didn't want) and the irony was that we all lived there, we'd all grown up there and one guy owned a home there. 

A long time ago, I gave myself a little rule to live by.  One of the very few I have.  It's "never stop in a small town here (Texas) for anything other than gas."  I refuse to spend a significant amount of time anywhere in Texas unless it's Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, or Houston.  Looking back, that might be the best rule I've ever come up with.

Scratch Dallas, SA and especially Houston. Houston made of a bunch of small towns crammed together and fed on steriods, bath salts and hate. 

Update: another Saturday night in Seguin ~ http://seguingazette.com/news/article_f7809790-b4b3-11e1-904d-001a4bcf887a.html?mode=story

We know that guy, he's my daughter's best friend's mom's ex-boyfriend. Of course the rumor going around town is that he was "cut in half".

Oh, Seguin! 

I need to look at a map, in order to determine whether I have or have not been through Seguin. It sounds familiar, but that could just be from hearing about it from you.

It might sound familiar because every single small town in Texas is JUST LIKE THAT.